Despite
being one of the bloodiest and most intense tragedies that shaped the beginning
of the Cold War in East Asia, the Korean War is still hotly contested. For most
Americans and South Koreans, almost everything about the war is mysterious and
inconclusive, from its origins to its continued repercussions through the division
of the Korean peninsula. Bruce Cumings clears some of the fog engulfing the war
in 288 pages, blending historical analysis with an eclectic collection of
allusions from philosophy, theatre, and literature. Invoking Nietzsche, Brecht,
and Bierce, he painstakingly shows why the Korean War, despite only lasting
three years, had such a devastating impact on the Korean and American psyche
that forgetting about the war seemed to be the best way to prevent succumbing
to the anti-Nietzschean disease of excessively remembering history.

Cumings
does not merely provide a historical narrative but also cogently explains why the
war is worthy of the historian’s attention in three sections. The first three
chapters deal with perception and interpretation and compare how the war
produced a “party of memory” and a “party of forgetting,”
suggesting that the war did not just create two states but also two polarized conceptions
of Korea’s liberation from Japan. North Koreans continue to bitterly remember
the wounds of Japanese imperialism. They preserve the bitterness through the
Kim Il-sung personality cult and a fervent anti-Japanese nationalism. Such
bitterness is the root cause behind molding Kim Il-sung into a national hero,
fighting against the Japanese with his northern guerrillas and continually
remembering the unresolved issue of Japan’s compensation to Korean women who
had to endure immense suffering as “comfort women.” In contrast, most
Americans and South Koreans constitute the “party of forgetting,”
only desiring to answer the question of who started the war. Cumings argues
that South Koreans and Americans were forced to focus overwhelmingly on this
question because South Koreans faced terrifying torture under the Korean
National Police, which received immense support from the American military
government. In the United States, a wave of anti-Communism swept across the
country through the rise of McCarthyism and Orientalist bigotry, preventing Americans
from understanding Koreans beyond the stereotype of the Asian as a
representative image of the enemy and unknown “other.” Anti-Communism
partnered with military repression and racist bigotry to prevent mutual and
comprehensive understanding between the two countries.

The
next two chapters explain what was forgotten about pre-war Korea in the United
States, which prevented Americans from understanding why they had to
participate in a war happening in a country unfamiliar to most of them. Cumings
surveys South Korean politics, highlighting charismatic figures such as Lyuh
Woon-hyoung and tragedies such as the April Third Massacre and the Yuh-soo and Soon-chuhn
Rebellions, which saw thousands of civilians, mostly wrongly suspected of
aiding southern Communists, brutally massacred by the South Korean military. The
American military government was responsible for deciding to employ the South Korean
military without knowing that the institution was and still is a living
historical memory of Korea’s national division, with most Korean generals
having served in the Japanese Imperial Army. Cumings also emphasizes “small
wars” across the 38th Parallel in 1949 between North and South Koreans, demonstrating
that these skirmishes served as a prelude to the Korean War. The United States’
lack of information about South Korea’s post-liberation politics and
encouragement of violent anti-Communism stemming from that ignorance, he
argues, are responsible for blotting out America’s brief yet turbulent
occupation of Korea from American memory.

The
final four chapters discuss historical memory as a ghost. Memories are presumably
invisible to the naked human eye. Yet Cumings argues that those relating to the
Korean War are still psychologically present, playing a requiem within Koreans
to remind them of a war which saw family members kill each other due to
ideological differences. In the case of Americans, memories are searching for a
tune to reflect a sincere gesture of reconciliation. The war continues to exist
in this limbo because of the forgotten South Korean massacre of Communists and,
in comparison with American counter-insurgency operations in South Korea, a heavily
disproportionate American carpet-bombing of North Korea. The latter resulted in
the American occupation of North Korea and killed thousands of civilians and
displaced many orphans, creating the ultimate source of North Korean bitterness
toward Americans and a prime cause for the former to label the latter as
“imperialists.” In contrast to the previous two sections, which
describe historical forgetfulness as a phenomenon inviting North and South
Korean and American passions, the final section provides an overarching
diagnosis of these various interpretations by pinpointing the American air war
in North Korea as a crucial and primary cause for the forgetfulness. The final
section’s exposition smoothly blends with scientific analysis, elegantly illuminating
the philosophy and structure of history as a social science while balancing
phenomenological clarification with painstaking causal analysis.

Despite
the seemingly perfect balance between historical explanation and theoretical profundity, however, the second
section is slightly rushed. A lack of Southern Leftist voices leaves Cumings’
analysis of South Korea’s political and social milieu prior to the war
incomplete. While he introduces an assortment of interesting personalities such
as the charismatic yet unfortunate non-ideological centrist Lyuh Woon-hyoung
(1886-1947), more should be said about South Korea’s political circumstances which
originally initiated the Korean War as a civil war between the southern Right
and the southern Left. The considerable involvement of the South Korean
Workers’ Party (SKWP), which is the second largest Communist party in Korea
after 1945, and the southern Left in establishing the Korean War’s paradigm as
a quest for “a more perfect Communist revolution” is one major piece
of the puzzle. Cumings could have also discussed the existence of archives at
the National Central Library and the Kyu-jahng-gahk Archives of Seoul National
University. He would have complemented his book by transcending a phenomenological
discussion of 1950-1953 and including a more precise portrait of the Left-Right
skirmish in South Korea. It would also have been worthwhile to explain why
South Koreans have experienced historical forgetfulness. By examining possible
causes of historical forgetfulness among Koreans such as the lack of scholarly
publications inquiring about pre-war South Korea, Cumings could have
facilitated a more direct qualitative comparison with Americans’ forgetfulness.
Had he done these things, Cumings would have provided sufficient context and
complexity about specifying the war’s “Koreanness.”

Overall,
however, the book is a profound example of methodological excellence in writing
history. Diverse allusions and philosophical observations spread evenly across
the book. They provide a good rhythmic balance between an emphasis on war as a
stern teacher and a careful attention to history as a collective psychological
drama filled with the blood, sweat, and tears of Koreans and Americans who
fought alongside and against each other. The book is a concise, sharp, and
excellent critique of American and South Korean conduct during the war, enough
to remind readers that we still have many mysteries about the war and its
origins to unravel. While it may still be unclear for many Americans what sort
of requiem to play for Koreans, the book will definitively remind readers that
playing one is necessary to remember and overcome the horrors that shaped the
Korean War. Cumings has written an essential and rewarding book that deserves critical
attention from historians and anyone interested in the causes of the hot
conflict that ushered in the Cold War.

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Essays in History

Established in 1954, Essays in History is the annual publication of the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia. EiH publishes original, peer-reviewed articles in all fields of historical inquiry, as well as reviews of the most recent scholarship. EiH serves as a resource to students, teachers, researchers, and enthusiasts of historical studies.